Re:Gender works to end gender inequity by exposing root causes and advancing research-informed action. Working with multiple sectors and disciplines, we are shaping a world that demands fairness across difference.

Higher Education

While women have made enormous strides in higher education, progress has been uneven. Women now receive a majority of undergraduate degrees but disparities remain, particularly at graduate, doctoral and post-doctoral levels. Colleges and universities still reflect inequities based on race, ability, geography and income. And more efforts must focus on advancing women and women of color into tenured and leadership positions with institutions of higher learning.
There is growing concern about the rising cost of higher education and how to improve quality and access. The financial crisis of 2008-09 has shrunk many endowment funds and reduced the number of scholarships available as well as making state and community colleges more competitive and less accessible. The effects of corporatization on college campuses are also a source of concern for the quality and independence of scholarship, including for women’s studies and other inter-disciplinary programs.

Universitywide, slightly more than a quarter of Harvard faculty members are women, an all-time high, with the senior faculty accounting for most of the increase. Women also lead the engineering school, the law school, the education school, Harvard College and the Radcliffe Institute. And while Harvard extended 4 of its 32 tenure offers to women in the year before Dr. Summers’s speech, last year, tenure offers went to 16 women and 25 men.

Editorial:

Given the overlap between the biological clock and the tenure clock, helping more women into senior academic positions is especially difficult at Harvard, where tenure is unusually slow, coming only with promotion to full professor. Also, Harvard has long been known for recruiting outsiders to senior positions, rather than promoting junior faculty members.

Research funded by the U.S. Department of Justice estimates that 1 out of 5 college women will be sexually assaulted. NPR's investigative unit teamed up with journalists at the Center for Public Integrity to look at the failure of schools — and the government agency that oversees them — to prevent these assaults and then to resolve these cases.

Ultimately, women need to see that their potential sacrifices will result in positive outcomes in order for them to make the decision to attend a graduate business program.Clearly, “glass ceiling” issues are perceived as very real, and the possibility of facing these issues after a substantial investment in a graduate business degree is not an encouraging prospect. These might be bigger issues than schools can influence.

Judith S. White is the executive director of Higher Education Resource Services (HERS), an educational non-profit that provides leadership and management training for women in higher education administration. The main offices of HERS are located on the campus of the University of Denver. Previously Dr. White was assistant vice president for campus services and adjunct professor of women’s studies at Duke University. She has taught and held administrative positions at Dartmouth College, UNC-Greensboro, UNC-Charlotte, and Queens College. Dr. White was a Senior Fellow of the Association of American Colleges and Universities from 2003-05, serving as an advisor to AAC&U’s Office of Diversity, Equity and Global Initiatives and the Project on the Status and Education of Women and as chair of the advisory board of Campus Women Lead. Judith attended Salem College before finishing her B.A. at Princeton University. She received her M.A.

Diana Nyad is an American swimmer and world record holder. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1986. Nyad was honored with her induction in the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 2003. She currently provides a five-minute radio piece on sports every week for KCRW and National Public Radio called The Score, as well as for the Marketplace radio program.